tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7849029138496420252016-08-13T15:53:25.666-07:00Attack of the LibrarygorillaJustinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.comBlogger55125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-78008525103190453342014-08-11T18:55:00.002-07:002015-11-28T11:26:05.104-08:00On Depression<span class="userContent">Depression isn't like anything.<br /> <br /> It really isn't. If you haven't experienced it, it's literally unimaginable. You can't think yourself out of it, even if you 'know' intellectually, what's happening to you.<br /> <br /> It doesn't matter how much succes<span class="text_exposed_show">s you have. It doesn't matter how much money you have. It doesn't matter how wonderful your friends are, or how much you love your family.<br /> <br /> It will tear that away from you. It will take you away from you. It's that bad. It's worse. I was lucky enough that it never got so bad that I wanted to die. But it got so bad I didn't care if I did. <br /> <br /> It's been fourteen years, give or take, since I got help for it. I am still terrified of it coming back. That's not exaggeration - it's maybe the thing that I am afraid of most, and number two isn't a close competitor. <br /> <br /> The best description of it I ever read was in Hyperbole and a Half, and these are a harrowing but worthwhile read:<br /> <br /> <a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fhyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com%2F2011%2F10%2Fadventures-in-depression.html&amp;h=5AQGKd3RA&amp;s=1" rel="nofollow nofollow" target="_blank">http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html</a><br /> <br /> <a href="http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-part-two.html" rel="nofollow nofollow" target="_blank">http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-part-two.html</a><br /> <br /> So, I hope he's found some peace he didn't get in life.</span></span>Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-76330026784309013392014-06-12T09:00:00.002-07:002014-06-12T09:00:40.239-07:00Comic Book Economics<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> 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table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style><![endif]--> <br /><div class="MsoNormal">There was this:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2014/06/quote-of-the-day-the-economics-of-creator-owned-comics/">http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2014/06/quote-of-the-day-the-economics-of-creator-owned-comics/</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Which I’ll quote a bit of:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“If<em> Rocket Girl</em> dips into the 8000s, we’ll start thinking about when to wrap it up. If it stays above 12,000 we can do it forever. At 12,000 copies I can make as much writing <em>Rocket Girl</em> as <em>Hulk</em>; Amy Reeder can make as much penciling/inking/coloring as she would on <em>Batwoman</em>. 8000 vs 12,000 is a significant difference in percentage, but it’s not a huge amount of readers.”<br /><br />Yup. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">One thing you should understand about Image books is that, for the most part, there’s no advance money. Which is why single issue sales matter. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Kyle, Felipe and I have Spread coming out on July 9<sup>th</sup>. Spread is an ongoing book. The earliest we’ll see non single issue money from that is March 2015, when we’ll start getting digital money. We won’t start getting trade money until September 2015. <br /><br />Which means that for a minimum of nine months from launch, the only money that is coming in is those single issues. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I can and do work on multiple books, so I have flexibility there. For Kyle, and for almost all artists, if he’s the artist on an ongoing book, then that book is all he’s doing. If it’s a monthly ongoing, there’s not much day job going to be happening either. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So single issues matter, because that’s effectively the only way for many books to pay the artist to, you know, live. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">You’re under no obligation to buy books you like in a format you like. And you might think that floppies are a drag on the industry. But the reality is that single issue sales will determine the futures of a lot of books. </div>Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-75701445642351902902014-04-03T10:18:00.001-07:002014-04-03T10:18:08.696-07:00The Fuzzy EdgesA little while ago, a fan asked me what Luther Strode was actually capable of, which I answered.<br /><br />Which lead to this:<br /><br />http://www.comicvine.com/forums/battles-7/luther-strode-has-been-depowered-1550815/?page=1<br /><br />Now, I'm glad that people are invested in the character, but it does make me aware that I should have given a caveat, one that is implicit to a writer but should probably be made explicit when you answer questions like that.<br /><br />Which is this: Character abilities are fuzzy around the edges.<br /><br />For instance, you know what, say, Jack Bauer, Rambo, and Jason Bourne all have in common?<br /><br />They're superhuman.<br /><br />No, they are. No one alive can do what they do the way that they do it.<br /><br />But you probably don't think of them as superhuman. They're just....heroic. Action movie stuff. And if they started going beyond the fuzzy limits of that, it's going to seem wrong to you. You'd accept, probably, them getting shot in the shoulder and then heroically winning a fistfight against the bad guy. You would not accept them having a greande explode in their pants and then tear the bad guy's head off with their barehands.<br /><br />Now, Luther is explicitly superhuman. So tearing a bad guy's head off is fair game. But you probably would look askance at him surviving the grenade thing.<br /><br />When I answered those questions about Strode, the answers I gave are indeed the rules of thumb I use when I write the books. Luther is about twice as strong and twice as fast as the peak human ability*, his senses are about twice as sharp, and then there's the healing, the ability to see weak points, and the ability to read body language.<br /><br />The key phrase you should be focusing on there is 'rule of thumb' because, as I said, these abilities are fuzzy. I have a sense of what is an action Luther is capable of&nbsp; and what he isn't.&nbsp; And the point of knowing those things is to tell a story with the kind of mood and world we want.<br /><br />What I don't do is say, Marvel Handbook style, that Luther is capable of lifting x weight, and then calculate the physics involved. Getting back to my Jack Bauer et al thing, the writers there did the same thing - they have a set of things that those characters are capable of that feel right and real for the world that they exist in. <br /><br />Which gives us limits that, hopefully, don't strain suspension of disbelief so far. But at the end of the day, that's there to service a story and not create a mathematically precise fight simulator. Sorry.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />If you're wondering, Luther is not the strongest, fastest or quickest person in the Luther Strode world, but you're still not going to see people throwing cars at each other.<br /><br />*Which, incidentally, is pretty fucking strong and pretty fucking fast - that's being able to run at 70 mph and lift a thousand plus pounds over his head or squat a ton is way more powerful than most people think it is. we just don't have a real context for how fast say Usain Bolt really is. Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-89281719686295431352014-02-28T15:33:00.001-08:002014-02-28T15:33:26.260-08:00Growing The Base<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><img src="//img2.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" style="background-color: #b2b2b2; " class="BLOGGER-object-element tr_noresize tr_placeholder" id="ieooui" data-original-id="ieooui" /><style>st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style><![endif]--> <br /><div class="MsoNormal">So, Eric Stephenson’s speech.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Read it here, if you haven’t: <a href="http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/02/28/star-wars-comics-will-never-be-the-real-thing-eric-stephenson-publisher-of-image-comics-talks-to-comicspro/">http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/02/28/star-wars-comics-will-never-be-the-real-thing-eric-stephenson-publisher-of-image-comics-talks-to-comicspro/</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">(Note that headline is misleading as fuck – really, Rich? But we’ll get to that in a bit)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Some context: This was a speech to retailers that went to the ComicsPro meeting dealie. So when he’s saying we, he means the retailers and Image. He’s not speaking for or to other publishers, and he doesn’t mean fans. This is actually important to remember.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Now what he mostly talks about is growing the comics industry. Not making more money, as such, but actually increasing the number of people who buy and read comics. This too, is important context.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So when he talks about 4.99 and 7.99 issues, for instance, or shipping more than one issue, what he’s saying is that those tactics are designed to bring in more money from existing fans. Likewise, variant covers and new number ones are designs to get people who are reading comics to spend more money.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Now I don’t think (and I could be wrong) that this is meant to be a blanket condemnation of those things in and of themselves. Indeed, Image does some of them. What he’s condemning is doing those without doing anything to grow the comics reading base.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Because they don’t.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Don’t get me wrong – comics is a business. Even in my creator owned work I keep an eye to maximizing the amount of money I squeeze out. I am actually kind of amazed that ways Marvel (and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Marvel seems to better at this than DC) has found to maximize their revenue. They understand who is reading their books and how they purchase them, and designed their business to get them to buy the most product. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But all of the above – expensive comics, variant covers, double shipping, reboots, hell, events – are things that only service people who are already reading comics. They are not things that are bringing new people to comics, and focusing only on getting most milk with the minimum of moo without breeding new cows is not good for the long term.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">(I will push a metaphor until it breaks, yes)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So I agree with him there.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">(I may also be wrong – the music industry analogy sort of sounds like he’s down on the whole practice. Hey, I’m not a mind reader. Not until I reach level 99 in Jordanology)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I got into comics because when I was a kid, comics where everywhere. I grew up in a rural county in Pennsylvania with a current population of around 40,000 people. As you might guess, there weren’t any comic shops around.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But every grocery store and every convenience store and what not had comics. I could go three miles down the road and but Ninja Warrior and Thrash at the AP. I got into comics because when I was a toddler my mom grabbed Popeye comics for me to…well, look at, I couldn’t yet read…when she was shopping. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I understand why comics aren’t, for the most part, in any of those places now. I do. But the truth is that thirty odd years ago, comics were infinitely more discoverable than they are now. And that’s a problem. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Where Stephenson and I part ways, to a certain extent, is on licensed comics. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">A tangent: I said that Star Wars headline was misleading as fuck. And it is. A lot of people are reading it to say that Star Wars comics, and licensed comics, aren’t “real” comics </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">He isn’t.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">He’s saying that people reading those comics are reading them because they can’t get the source material. They read Star Wars comics, but what they want is more Star Wars movies. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I don’t necessarily agree with that, but it’s a different notion than implying he was saying they weren’t real comics. He wasn’t. He said that The Walking Dead TV show isn’t the real thing either, but what he meant isn’t that it’s the original source material.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Now I’m going to thread that tangent back into my main point. Stephenson is of the mind that people that read licensed comics want that thing, and aren’t interested in comics per se, so licensed comics don’t do anything to grow the comic market.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I don’t think that’s precisely true. For one thing, I think that people that read licensed comics are, by and large, comics readers who happen to like that property. Again, this doesn’t really grow the market, so no disagreement there, I just think he’s mischaracterizing them.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Now some of the people who are reading those licensed comics surely are people who just want that property. And again, selling comics to those people doesn’t really grow the market as a whole.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But I do think that some of those people must start buying other comics. I mean, that has to be a thing that happens. But I also don’t know that it amounts to much, growthwise. So I don’t entirely disagree with him.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I do agree with overall thrust, which is that the comic industry needs to devote more time and energy to expanding their base. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">If I were a retailer, I would give free comics to kids. Not just kids that came into my store, but I’d give out free issues to kids in schools. I would make sure every school and high school and library in my area was stocked with trades (and if I could, I’d make sure they all had plates that said who donated them).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">If I were a publisher, I would do the same thing. I would make digital comics that kids could read on their game platforms or computers. I would make sure they had an interest in comics, not just toys or characters. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Yes, all of this would cost money. But it’s a relatively small investment against future gains. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But that’s me.</div>Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-30297759132620244392014-01-29T19:36:00.001-08:002014-01-29T19:36:46.819-08:002014 Conventions <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><img src="//img2.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" style="background-color: #b2b2b2; " class="BLOGGER-object-element tr_noresize tr_placeholder" id="ieooui" data-original-id="ieooui" /><style>st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style><![endif]--> <br /><div class="MsoNormal">MGA Con - <span class="null">March 15-16 in Macon, GA</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Awesomecon – April 18 – 20 in Washington DC</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">C2E2 – April 25 – 27 in Chicago</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Wizard World Atlanta (maybe) – May 20 – June 1 in Atlanta </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Heroes – June 20 – 22 in Charlotte NC</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Baltimore - Sept. 5-7 in….yeah, I think you got this.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">NYCC – October 9 – 12 in the Big Apple</div>Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-19874492929490704352014-01-11T15:11:00.002-08:002014-01-11T15:11:20.710-08:00An Infinite Joy<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style><![endif]--> <br /><div class="MsoNormal">He killed Edwards again this morning.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It wasn’t fancy, this time. He just put the gun up against the back of the man’s head and pulled the trigger. He’d gotten a little bored, again, with coming up with ever more elaborate deaths for Edwards, so he was spending some time back with the basics. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">He watched the reactions of the people on the street, interested. The man who had the bullet that passed through Edwards’s head lodged in his neck. The woman walking by who was splattered with Edwards last thoughts. He wondered what their lives would be like, after. Seeing that. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">He wondered, briefly, if this Edwards had killed Rebecca. They didn’t always. He’d been at this a long time, if time were the right word, and he moved to branches where sometimes it wasn’t Edwards. She was still dead, though. She was still always dead.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">He heard a siren and he put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">He woke up in his bed. More or less. Depending on how you defined him. It was morning and the sun was shining and the sky was clear and blue. It always was. He wondered how many times he would have to do this before that changed. Maybe it never would.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">He turned on the television, which was the same, and watched the news, which was also the same. If he killed Edwards a thousand more times, the news might be different. It might not be. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The gun was on the nightstand. He’d planned on using it on himself, last night. Not last night, not really, but because today was always today he still thought of it as last night, even if last night was a very, very long time ago. Just as today was always six days after the funeral. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It took him a long time to realize that every day was not the same. Not exactly. Things changed, every time. So small you couldn’t see them, but the added up. His theory now was that he was moving through these days, all the ways this day could have been, not just repeating it. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">That was the theory, anyway. In practice, it didn’t matter. Just like it didn’t matter who or what had done this to him. He thought this was supposed to be a punishment. He imagined this was the rock he was pushing up the hill, ever and always, for ever. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">He imagined this was meant to be Hell. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Maybe it should have been. Maybe he should learn. Maybe he should suffer. But he thought of Rebecca and he thought about Edwards. And knew this wasn’t hell. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be. He still felt, for a split second, when Edwards died, an endless and infinite joy. He put the gun in his pocket and smiled. It didn’t feel like a gun day, today. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">He thought today it would be fire. </div>Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-77239066050465840022013-10-08T11:11:00.001-07:002015-12-17T06:58:18.616-08:00New York Comic Con 2013 Schedule<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style><![endif]--> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="aqj"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Thursday Oct 10</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="aqj">At the table!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="aqj"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Friday October 11 </b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="aqj">11:00 – 12:00 Image Booth Signing – with Tradd and Felipe!</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">&nbsp;</b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Saturday October 12 </b> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">12:30 - 1:30&nbsp; Avatar Uncut - -&nbsp; RM&nbsp; 1A23<span class="aqj"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="aqj">3:00</span> – <span class="aqj">4:00<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Image Booth Signing – with Tradd and Felipe!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">4:15 – 5:15<span class="aqj"> Skybound Panel</span> RM 1A08</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Sunday October 13<sup>th</sup> </b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span class="aqj">12:30-1:30pm</span> SIGNING (DCE SIGNING AREA Table EE1)</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span class="aqj">2:30-3:30pm</span> Green Lantern – Lights Out! – Room 1A22</div>Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-73266661266327083422013-08-21T11:00:00.003-07:002013-08-21T11:00:38.090-07:00“WHAT KIND OF SICK FUCK BUYS THIS SHIT????”<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style><![endif]--> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This was Heidi MacDonald's question about the Crossed torture covers. You can see the article linked below. But this reaction interests me, because it’s pretty much the same reaction that many people have to two dudes kissing. Or buying a book about someone who likes to dominate other people, or be dominated by other people.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">(You can start humming Sweet Dreams now)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But I suspect if someone were to publically say “WHAT KIND OF SICK FUCK BUYS THIS SHIT????” about, say, S and M, then you’d get a much different kind of response. But understand that whether you think enjoying S and M or gay porn is equivalent to enjoying gore, you are essentially judging someone by their taste in fiction in a way that demonizes and marginalizes them. It says that if you like this, you are a fucked up human being. Torture covers are apparently an acceptable target. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Now, I write an extremely violent and gore filled comic and I am writing Crossed which, as you might guess, is ALSO extremely violent and gore filled. So the full disclosure bit is out of the way.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">What might surprise you is that I don’t actually like gore. I’ve never been a gorehound, and most of the time I don’t find it all that entertaining. Shit, some of the scariest and most disturbing movies are some of the least gore filled. Note that despite their reputation, the first Halloween and the orginal Texas Chainsaw Massacre are relatively tame affairs from a strictly blood and guts perspective. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But I am a fan of horror, and as mentioned, I do write a lot of extremely violent things, so I’ve had occasion to meet a lot of gorehounds. So I am at least in some position to offer an opinion on what kind of sick fucks they are. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Not sick fucks at all, usually. They are, as most people are, by and large nice and normal people with no particular urge to violently torture and murder people. People that know the difference between real and not real, which seems to be lacking in some people’s ability to imagine stuff.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I do not understand S&amp;M. I don’t. I can’t understand why people would get off on domination or being dominated. I also know that Fifty Shades of Grey made the author just shy of 100 million dollars, which indicates that quite a lot of people enjoying reading about it or, at the very least, aren’t bothered by it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I could ask “WHAT KIND OF SICK FUCK BUYS THIS SHIT????” because the ideas it supposes are unfathomable to me. But the fact that it is hugely popular leads to the apparent notion that, perhaps, they aren’t sick fucks and I should examine the inside of my own head a little better.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Or, if you want to get a little higher on the transgressive scale, I’ve known at least two woman who have rape fantasies. I say at least, because I suspect I know others who just kept that particular information to themselves.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Again, I do not understand this. I do not understand how something as horrifying as being the victim rape can be turned into a sexual fantasy. But I also know that these women do not want to be raped, and would just as hurt and damaged by the act as anyone else. Because, again, there is a line between fantasy and reality, and because you enjoy something in fantasy or fiction doesn’t mean you want to carry out the act in real life.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It doesn’t make you a sick fuck.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">There was an article, which I am not going to link to, I saw last week, where the summary I wish I hadn’t read was this: a newlywed couple was in a car accident, and both of them died. The wife was killed on impact, but the husband survived long enough to receive aid. He begged them to save his wife, because she was pregnant. Their family only learned the couple was expecting when they found the sonogram pictures in the wife’s purse. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This is horror.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And what is worse, this is something has entertained thousands if not millions of people. They don’t think of themselves as being entertained, but these kinds of stories, presented as news? They aren’t news. They contain no information that you need to know, unless, perhaps, you knew the subject. This is real people’s tragedy, packaged as entertainment and used to make a profit.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And while you may have not read this particular story, it’s a near certainty that you have read or watched with rapt attention while someone else’s horror is presented to you as entertainment. I have. I try not to, and I mostly succeed. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So how, exactly, are we not all sick fucks? </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">http://comicsbeat.com/so-what-kind-of-person-buys-a-torture-variant-cover-anyway-nsfw-trigger-images/</div>Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-75726542044231731742013-08-10T11:21:00.001-07:002013-08-10T11:21:21.033-07:00On Contacting Artists<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style><![endif]--> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="usercontent">I started out writing five page (or thereabouts) stories as my first thing in comics. Part of this was that I believed (and still do) that getting good at telling stories in five pages would make for a solid foundation for telling longer stuff. </span><br /><br /><span class="usercontent">But the OTHER reason I did it was that I reasoned that it'd be much easier to actually get people to draw them damn things if I we</span><span class="textexposedshow">re only asking for five pages or so. I was not a total idiot - I knew how long it took to draw a page of art.</span><br /><br /><span class="textexposedshow">Which seemed to work. My thinking was that having stuff drawn would make it easier to get more stuff drawn, and this seems to be true. By the time I contacted Tradd to see if he wanted to work on Luther Strode with me, I had somewhere over two hundred pages of work that had been drawn and lettered. Not all or even most of it five pages stories - this ranged from those stories to (mostly) pitches to Zuda entries to full issues of at least one thing.</span><br /><br /><span class="textexposedshow">So having a goodly sized....porffolio, I guess, is one thing. The other thing is refining your pitch, which I got pretty good at. The basic format I eventually developed was:</span><br /><br /><span class="textexposedshow">Introduce yourself briefly, including one or two relevent work credits.</span><br /><br /><span class="textexposedshow">Tell them why you are contacting them - basically "I have a project I think you'd be great for, and I wanted to see if you might be interested in working with me"</span><br /><br /><span class="textexposedshow">Mention where you saw the artist's work and what you liked about it.</span><br /><br /><span class="textexposedshow">Tell them, in no more than one sentence, what the project is and the length it'd be, and if it's just a pitch how many pages you think it would be.</span><br /><br /><span class="textexposedshow">Link to a place where they can see the stuff you've done, with some direct links to two or three things.</span><br /><br /><span class="textexposedshow">Tell them if they're interested you can send more information, and thank them for their time.</span><br /><br /><span class="textexposedshow">And that's it. Basically, this works out to about a sentence for each thing. This is assuming you are contacting the artist completely cold, so you want to be as brief and direct as possible and provide the means to check you out. I don't include attachments, and wouldn't recommend it - I wouldn't open an attachment from someone I don't know, and it would make me suspicious, so I don't do it to others.</span><br /><br /><span class="textexposedshow">Of course, sometimes I don't follow my own advice. I'm going to copy and paste the first email I sent to Tradd here, which follows this format but goes waaaaaay long in the description.</span><br /><br /><span class="textexposedshow">What can I say, I had a hunch. </span><br /><br /><span class="textexposedshow">Hello, Mr. Moore</span><br /><br /><span class="textexposedshow">My name is Justin Jordan, and I really hope you're both a Mr and a Moore, or I'm going to be all kinds of embarassed. I write comics, and I'm having some success with that, and I wanted to see if you were interested in working together on something. I read on your DA account that you're extremelt busy, but I figured it was woth a shot.</span><br /><br /><span class="textexposedshow">First, my bona fides: I've been in a bout a million anthlogies, and I've twice been a finalist in DC's Zuda competition, with the comics Junk and Rumors of War. I've also had a comic with Arcana, but that fell apart when the company changed hands. You see a bunch more of my comics projects by following the ...er...following links: The Assignment, Overthrow!, The Weird Adventures of Jenny Strange and Red Winter.</span><br /><br /><span class="textexposedshow">The comic project I'd like you to take a look at is called The Strange Talent of Luther Strode, which is about a bullied kid who wishes he had the power to fight back ...and gets it. Luther is a bullied and abused kid who orders an obscure physical fitness course called the Hercules Method from an old comic book.</span><br /><br /><span class="textexposedshow">The book actually shows up, and skinny Luther, who is desperate to buff up and become less of a target, starts performing the book's exercises, which are a strange mix of martial arts, mysticism, meditation and yoga. Much to Luther's surprise, he begins to add muscle immediately. In fact, the transformation is nearly miraculous. Luther gets stronger, faster, more confident.</span><br /><br /><span class="textexposedshow">Unfortunately for Luther and everyone else in his life, the book is actually a manual and test for an ancient murder cult, and following the Hercules method instills in him both the capablity to kill with his bare hands and the desire to use it. As if this weren't bad enough, the cult has dispatched the Librarian, the keeper of the book, to recruit Luther, even if it means killing everone Luther knows.</span><br /><br /><span class="textexposedshow">It's sort of a superhero origin story gone really, really wrong, and features an awful lot of blood and destruction. The series would be six issues but all I'd need right now is enough to pitch - five pencilled and inked pages and a cover mockup. I can provide coloring and lettering, although if you'd like to do either, that'd be cool, too.</span><br /><br /><span class="textexposedshow">Anyway, I've taken enough fo your time, so I'd just like to thank you for taking the time to read this and if you'd like to read a more complete synopsis of the series, I'd be happy to provide.</span><br /><br /><span class="textexposedshow">Thanks,</span><br /><br /><span class="textexposedshow">Justin Jordan</span></div>Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-15556889843117935962013-05-21T20:50:00.001-07:002013-05-21T20:50:52.483-07:00Writing Essentials (If You're Me)<h5 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{&quot;type&quot;:1,&quot;tn&quot;:&quot;K&quot;}"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{&quot;type&quot;:3}"><span class="userContent">Some reminders to myself about what I think is important when I write. These may not be the same for anyone who is not me.<br /> <br /> The Essentials:<br /> <br /> A three act structure in scenes, issues and arcs.<br /><span class="text_exposed_show"> <br /> Rising action through the entire book<br /> <br /> Every character should be a character – give some thought to who they are and what they want and why they are where they are. Try to make them distinct.<br /> <br /> Issues and arcs should have an emotional core – they should make the main characters feel something, and examine some part of their personality.<br /> <br /> Maybe not essential, but worth thinking about:<br /> <br /> Mind your page turns, but don’t be too obsessed with them.<br /> <br /> End on a cliffhanger or a badass moment each issue.</span></span></span></h5>Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-42812022049982259592013-03-27T19:17:00.000-07:002013-03-27T19:17:02.048-07:002013 ConventionsWell, mostly conventions.<br /><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><img src="//img2.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" style="background-color: #b2b2b2; " class="BLOGGER-object-element tr_noresize tr_placeholder" id="ieooui" data-original-id="ieooui" /><style>st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style><![endif]--> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Awesome Con </b></div><div class="MsoNormal">April 20 - 21,</div><div class="MsoNormal">Washington Convention Center</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Stumptown</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="fest-title">April 27 - 28</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="fest-title">Oregon</span><span class="fest-title"> Convention Center</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">FCBD</b></div><div class="MsoNormal">Heroes Aren’t Hard To Find</div><div class="MsoNormal">May<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>4</div><div class="MsoNormal">1957 E 7th St<br />Charlotte, NC 28204</div><div class="textgeneralmain"><br /></div><div class="textgeneralmain"><strong>HeroesCon 2013</strong><b><br /></b><span class="textsidebar">June 7-9, 2013</span><br />Charlotte Convention Center <br />501 S. College St.<br />Charlotte, NC 28202</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">West Virginia</b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> Popular Culture Convention</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="aidanews2text">August 24 - 25 &nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal">Mylan Park Expo Center </div><div class="MsoNormal">500 Mylan Park Lane </div><div class="MsoNormal">Morgantown,WV</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Baltimore</b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> Comic Con</b></div><div class="MsoNormal">Sept. 7 - 8</div><div class="MsoNormal">Baltimore Convention Center</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">New York</b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> Comic Con</b></div><div class="MsoNormal">October 10 – 13</div><div class="MsoNormal">Javitts Convention Center</div>Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-74786919910480325402012-10-26T07:55:00.001-07:002012-10-26T07:55:02.003-07:00Ashcan UpdateThe Ashcans have all been mailed. <br /><br />Since this is the USPS we're talking about, I can't say exactly when they will get to you. My guess would be mostly next week for US people, longer for foreign folks, and some will inexplicably get them today or six weeks from now. <br /><br />But if you live in the US and haven't gotten yours by, say, November 9th, shoot me an email about it and we'll see if there's anything we can do. Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-31974649318948544392012-10-23T11:05:00.000-07:002012-10-23T11:05:48.721-07:00Heinlein's Rules of Writing1. You must write. <br />2. You must finish what you write. <br />3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order. <br />4. You must put the work on the market. <br />5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.<br /><br />And if you don't know who Robert Heinlein is, may God have mercy on your soul.<br /><br />I mention these because I think there's a lot of useful stuff in there, even for comic writers. One thing to note is that these say zero about story. They're not meant to; they're about being a productive professional writer.<br /><br />My thoughts:<br /><br />1. You must write.<br /><br />I'm pretty sure you're making a no shit face, if not actually saying it. But, you know, there are a LOT of people who want to be writers who never get around to actually writing anything. Which is fine, generally, but not actually doing the thing you want to do is not generally a recipe for success.<br /><br />I would note this also, unfortunately, applies to published professional writers. I am writing this to get myself warmed up for the paying work. Ass in chair time isn't always easy to make yourself do. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />2. You must finish what you write. <br /><br />And for those who actually do get down to the writing bit, this is the next stumbling point. This includes me. I have something like half a dozen started but far from completion novels in my computer. It may actually be more. I have never finished a novel.<br /><br />So, you know, this is good advice. If you're trying to break into comics, I recommend writing the first issue of whatever you're going to pitch, and I recommend writing a lot of those. I have ten or so projects trying to be greenlit as I write this, for instance.<br /><br />But you need to be finishing stuff, too. So always have at least one project that you are working on and finish it and go to the next one. I am currently, for instance, working on Legend (nearly finished) and Savant as my creator owned projects. When I finish those, another of my being pitched projects will slot in. WHich one depends on what gets greenlit or not. <br /><br /><br />3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order. <br /><br />This tends to be the one that gets the most resistance and, truth be told, I don't entirely agree with it myself. I don't think that the first draft of everything is automatically shit and do believe that there is a certain point when you are flat out not improving things anymore, just changing them.<br /><br />What you need to do is somewhere in the middle ground, and it will vary from writer to writer as well as from project to project. I rarely rewrite in the sense of going back in and tinkering with things. Usually if I have a successful draft, it's 95% of where it needs to be.<br /><br />The key phrase there is successful draft. I semifrequently get to the end of a draft, decide it's crap and start over again from the beginning. This is rewriting, yes. But I don't do much in the middle ground version. My general rule of thumb is that if I know how to fix something, I will, but if there's just an overall sense of suck I leave it be. The former is my critical mind working, but the latter is just me being insecure. Not that I don't sometimes suck outlloud - its just that when I can't pinpoint why, it's my brain playing tricks on me.<br /><br />Having said all that, I'm pretty sure the point here is to avoid that third writerly tendency, which is to keep tinkering with things forever and ever and ever. You're better off, both from a getting published and improving as a writer standpoint, finishing things and moving on to the next thing. So if you've been polishing one thing for a long time, maybe you should apply this rule for a while.<br /><br />4. You must put the work on the market.<br /><br />Indeed. Like not writing if you want to write, not pitching (or self pubbing) if you want to be published is generally a poor strategy, unless you're planning on dying and having your mom discover your works of genius and publish them posthumously. Even then, I recommend pitching, because moldering corpses don't have as much fun at cons. <br /><br />5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.<br /><br />My variation of this would be to not give up on a project (or more importantly, yourself) if you've had a rejection. As anyone who has known me for a while will tell you, I never give up on projects I think have legs. I've been working on bringing two projects to print for at least five years, and it might well be more. So, you know, if you believe in something, keep at it. Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-36241186643659970622012-10-08T14:13:00.002-07:002012-10-08T14:13:33.693-07:00NYCC 2012I'll be there. As will Tradd. <br /><br />We have a table in Artist's Alley - BB15<br /><br />I only vaguely know where that is myself, so you're on your own there.<br /><br />But here's where I'll be, as best I know it, during the con when I'm not at the table. Which is most of the time, it seems.<br /><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style><![endif]--> <br /><div class="MsoNormal">Justin Jordan NYCC 2012 Schedule</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Thursday</b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">Valiant 6:15 – 7:00 Justin Jordan </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Friday</b></div><div class="MsoNormal">Valiant Signing 12:30 – 1:30 </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Image Signing 1:30-3:00</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Valiant Panel 1A08 2:45 – 3:45</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Jim Zub Panel 1A14 5:15 – 6:15</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b>Saturday </b><span style="background: black; color: #7d7d7d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">DC Panel </span>1E07 <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>1:30-3:00</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Valiant Signing 3:30 – 5:00 <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b>Sunday </b></div><div class="MsoNormal">Valiant Signing 11:30 – 12:30 </div>Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-20136748275014721762012-09-27T10:59:00.002-07:002012-09-27T19:18:48.212-07:00How To Get The Ashcan<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><br /><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style><![endif]--> <br /><div class="MsoNormal">Right, the Ashcan.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The only big caveat is that you WILL NOT receive these until after NYCC – I won’t have gotten them and have had time to send them before then, and it’s supposed to debut there anyway. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So, again, these won’t get to you until after October 16 2012. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">With that in mind, here’s how you get one:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Paypal 15.00 US for each copy you want to <a href="mailto:JustinJordan@gmail.com">JustinJordan@gmail.com</a> I’m going to cap those at two per person. It’d be one, but I know some people will be getting for multiple people. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In the note part, put your name and address. Seriously, I need that to send your sweet, sweet ashcans. If you don’t have the name and address in there, I am going to send your money back, rather than waste it on hookers and blow. Nobody wants that. Include your address.<br /><br />And if you're wondering what it's IN yon ashcan:<br /><br /><span class="userContent">22 Pages, Black and White, limited to no more than 500 copies. Might be less, for sure won't be more.<br /> <br /> 11 pages of Legend of Luther Strode<br /> <br /> 6 page recap of Strange Talent<br /> <br /> 5 pages of brand damn new material, which will never be reprinted. <br /> </span><br /><div class="text_exposed_show">Available from Tradd and Justin at NYCC (obviously enough) but it's also going to be available to online folks who've supported the book but can't make it to NYCC. We just need to figure out how we're going to do it. Most likely, we'll just have people paypal me the money and then ship it by hand, but we're still working it out. <br /><br />So that's the skinny.</div><br /></div>Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-31295141667365387762012-09-01T21:43:00.002-07:002012-09-01T21:43:38.385-07:00Losing Fifty Odd Pounds<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><img src="//img2.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" style="background-color: #b2b2b2; " class="BLOGGER-object-element tr_noresize tr_placeholder" id="ieooui" data-original-id="ieooui" /><style>st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style><![endif]--> <br /><div class="MsoNormal">Well, they weren’t that odd. They were fairly typical. Doughy, unpleasant, insulating – you know, pounds. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m not entirely sure what my peak weight was. I usually go with 314, which is the highest weight I had recorded at the Doctor’s office, but it’s entirely possible I weighed a few pounds more at some point. Hence the fifty odd bit.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">My weight was been as low as 259 recently (and briefly) but has generally settled around 262 pounds for the last month or so. Prior to that, I had been pretty stable at 270 or so. You’ll note a lot of vague “or so” and “around” in there, which is because my body can fluctuate mightly during day. I normally go to bed weighing about five pounds more than I woke up and I can run that up to ten with some work.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Some other stuff about me, in brief. I’m 34 years old, and six feet tall or so (again, I’ve been measured at anywhere from a bit over six foot to a bit over six foot one), and I was diagnosed as a type two diabetic five or six years. Actually, might be closer to seven, now.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Obesity and diabetes run in the family. My father and I weighed 309 at the same time, briefly, but he’s a good five inches shorter than me. And like me, was/is diabetic. Likewise, my maternal grandfather was diabetic, as was his mom. And so on and so forth. I got a lot of good genes, but the ones for sugar metabolism weren’t among them.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">On the plus side, I am naturally pretty strong. I could, without lifting, do 185 for a single in the bench, 135 in the press, and deadlift 315. Not incredible, by any means, especially for someone my size, but I mention it because it’s relevant to my weight story.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I never felt bad. I mean, I could plan whatever sport I wanted, never felt bogged down by my size, and never felt especially fat, even, although I clearly was. That’s not just in retrospect, either – I managed to both be aware and in denial at same time. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Having a decent amount of natural strength and fitness insulted me from the damage I was doing. I fairly recently hauled my then 275 pound carcass up one side of a mountain and down the other, thirteen miles of no trail bushwhacking in a day’s time, without having had a lick of exercise in the two or three years prior to that. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">That hike is also illustrative of another point: my body was starting to fall apart. I got some good genes: strength, fitness, flexibility, stunning good looks and a sparkling personality. I also got some bad genes: fatness, diabetes, the inability to see more than a foot or so and a love of bad puns. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>And a tendency towards joint problems.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This is probably related to an extreme natural flexibility, oddly enough. My mother, who is around 5’3 and usually weighs around 120 and works out religiously has the same bendiness that I do, and the same joint problems.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So while I was physically able to do the hike, I developed some sort of problem with my Achilles tendon (possibly tendonitis) that took more than a year to heel. Likewise, when I spent a day canoeing through not quite enough water, I developed some sort of something in y neck, trap area. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And so on and so forth. Those two things actually happened after I lost weight, incidentally, but they’re the tip of the iceberg. But what they show is that my body was slowly losing the battle against fat and diabetes.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">My diabetes was, generally, poorly controlled and slowly progressing. Mostly, this was only apparent in my blood sugar numbers. I could get fairly good control<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>by restricting carbs, but I could never stick with it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Worse, I developed a bad habit of binging on carbs in preparation for the low carb periods to come, including some times when they never did come. This was not a happy state of affairs.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So I started losing weight. By using the shocking method of eating less. It’s not that I think that Gary Taubes and co are wrong, exactly. I think there’s a lot of truth to the idea of chronically elevated insulin levels damaging your body. But I also don’t think it’s the whole story.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">There’s a lovely idea that if you restrict your carbs, your hunger will be blunted and you will eat less. After all, they say, who can overeat on steak.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Uh, me. Because I am the black hole of Pennsylvania and no food can escape me.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m absolutely sure there are people for<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>whom the hunger blunting equals weight loss idea is true. They may even be the majority. But they aren’t me. Me, I can eat tremendous amounts of food, even if I restrict my carbs to as close to zero as possible. I mean, I just this past week ate more than a pound of meat in about ten minutes. I can absolutely eat an entire bag of grilled chicken breasts at a sitting.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The point is that if I don’t make a conscious decision to eat less, I will eat more. This has little to nothing to do with hunger and quite a lot to do with psychology and habits. I like being stuffed to the gills. I do. But I don’t feel deprived if I’m not. It’s a trait that needs to be managed.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So what I did was found places where I could remove food with out it bothering me. If I were eating hamburgers at home, I ate them without the bun and chips or whatever. I didn’t eat ice cream more than once every few weeks. I didn’t drink any liquid calories. Stuff like that. Which worked.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Sloooooowly. I actually lost four pounds between every Doctor’s appointment for a long stretch, something like two or three years. It was so predictably regular that I joked that if I scheduled an appointment every month I’d be down to flyweight in no time (demonstrating the same ignorance of causality as your typical diet and exercise journalist, too).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So over the course of a couple of years (three, I think) my weight went from 314 down to around 270. Where it promptly stopped. For several years. Which was actually sort of interesting, because my diet was all over the place back then.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m not sure where I stand on the set point theory. It clearly exists, for some people. My best friend, for instance, has weighed about 150 pounds his entire adult life. He had back surgery a few years ago and his weight dropped, naturally and without conscious action, by fifteen pounds because without activity, he wasn’t hungry. As soon as he started moving, he was back to normal fairly quickly. So yeah, he’s got some sort of internal equilibrium</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">What I’m less sure of is how it all works. Most people will max out on how fat they get, regardless. You hit a certain weight and don’t get much fatter. Otherwise, half the country would be getting the walls cut out of their house to get them out. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But regardless of how it worked, it seems like my set point changed to keep me at 270. I’d go a couple of weeks eating obscene, ridiculous amounts of food, and there’d be no notable weight gain – two pounds that would be gone in days. You might think that I was overestimating the time I was overeating or the amount, but you’ll just have to take my word for it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">On the flipside, I wasn’t losing any more weight. And I assure you, I did and do need to lose more weight. At 270 my around the navel measurement was 50 inches (49 if I snugged up the tape) which is, uh, big. Periodic forays into more restricted eating didn’t seem to make much difference, and in any cases I didn’t stick with them.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Still, forty pounds is no joke. It just wasn’t enough. My diabetes was somewhat improved, but nowhere near good. So earlier this year I tried eating a low carb diet again, to see what effect it had on my blood sugars: a big one, and quite notable.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Unfortunately, a few weeks into this, I suffered a pretty big personal loss and while I was able to keep going for a few weeks more, I eventually went off the rails again. What’s interesting is that I ate as much as I wanted, just low carb, and my weight was rock solid stable. No weight loss at all. So for me, it was pretty conclusive proof that I needed calorie restriction or I would eat everything, ever, even on low carbs.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But I started to feel as if the diabetes was catching up with me. Nothing I could be sure was diabetic complications, but enough to give me significant amounts of anxiety about the whole thing. Nightmares about losing your feet are not fun. At all.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So this past month, I committed to going all month eating as close to zero carbs as possible. I would eat most beef, with some cheese and some chicken, but a good ninety percent of my meals were cow.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I started eating within a somewhat narrow window, between noon and seven o’clock. Which in practice was more one to seven, but hey, close enough. I tried to keep my calories to less than 2,000 a day. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I also started experimenting with both my drugs and supplements that were allegedly by credible sources to maybe help. All this while stringently monitoring my blood sugar, generally more than a dozen times each day.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And it worked. I slipped up, if you want to call it that, twice during August. Once was when I was just flat out wrong about carbs in something, and once when my blood sugar kept dropping and I couldn’t get it to stay where I wanted it without eating some carbs. But still, I consider it a success.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">My weight dropped down to as low as 259 (the lighest, by several pounds, I’ve weighed since I hit my adult height at age 13) before stabilizing at 262 or thereabouts. And actually, I’m fairly certain the couple of pounds bounced upwards was a result of my supplementing with taurine in doses that are said to have a cell volumizing effect, pretty much the same as creatine.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">My calories would at points drop fairly low. I know I had a number of 1000 calorie days especially in the beginning. This was because while I am capable of eating a whole lot at any one meal, my urge to eat between meals was pretty much gone, so as long as I kept my meals to 500 calories or so, I didn’t eat much.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I did notice that I started getting cold all the time when my calories were that low. My gut feeling is that my metabolism was slowing down. I started eating more calories, and the cold went away but my weight remained stable. So make of that what you will. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But blood sugarwise, I’m almost there. I spend most of my day with my BS in the normal range for a healthy person, which is better than most doctors will try for. I’m not all the way there, because I still have a rise between noon and four that I can’t get locked down. It’s physiological – it happens regardless of whether I eat or not. I just haven’t been able to find a way to compensate for it. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I still have a good ways to go. I’d like to get lean enough that, if possible, I can control my diabetes through diet alone, which I’d consider cured. But that may not be possible. Still, going to try. I’d like to get my waist down to 36, which would be half my height which is apparently nice and healthy. Probably look okay, too. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This month, I’m staying at near zero carb, but I’ve opened up my options a bit: I’m eating some spinach salads, for instance. Still tracking against my BS readings for all of that. August was No Carb August, and September is going to be All Walkies September, where I will attempt to walk for at least 30 minutes every day of the month.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Some takeaways, which certainly apply to me and may or may not apply to you:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">You Have To Find Out What Works</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">For you. I have no idea if intermittent fasting works for everyone. Almost certainly not. I’m definitely not sure if there is a physiologic benefit to it. But it works for me and my goals. Likewise, I make no assertion that a diet consisting mostly of beef was anywhere near ideal, but it worked for the goals I had set out.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I am terrible patient for a doctor, and I’d probably be a terrible trainee for a coach, because I’ll do my own thing and hodge podge stuff together without asking. What can I say, I am who I am. But I found something (things, really, because it’s a moving target) that worked for me. And did them, which brings me to point two…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">(And as a side note, my bloodwork improved across the board. If the cow was bad for me, it was more than offset by my blood sugar improvement)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And Do It</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I knew low carb would reduce my blood sugars. I’d seen that. I just didn’t do it (and may fall off the wagon again – I hope not, but I’m realisitic) and that applies to a lot of stuff. It’s not especially helpful to know what works for you if you don’t do it, and there’s a good argument that stuff that works but you don’t do doesn’t actually “work”. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So eating all beef for a month was something I could do. I have plenty of beef, it’s easy to prepare and I like it. Ideal for health? Probably not. Ideal for doing a month controlled experiment? Sure. For me.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The walking thing is based around this principle as well. It’s not that 30 minutes is probably going to tremendously improve anything. But it’s a positive thing for my health, and 30 minutes a day is something I will actually do. And 900 minutes of something I will do is a lot better than the 0 minutes of the ideal.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Set Conditions For Success</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">My aforementioned best friend gave me advice, which was good advice because he is smart and awesome, which I didn’t take for a long time. The advice was this: set conditions for success. By which he meant that need to make sure that you have your environment prepared for whatever it is you want to do. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Dan John once wrote that if your diet involves eating three apples a day and you only have twelve apples, you’re gonna have problems.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So, for the No Carb August, I planned ahead. I chose August, for one thing, because it’s a month where I had virtually nothing going on travelwise. No conventions or signings, no big birthday parties, nothing like that. No situations that would make it harder to succeed.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Likewise, I knew that having stuff ready that was palatable and required little preparation was a must. If you don’t have time to cook, it gets very easy to eat pre made carb heavy stuff. So I got beef cooked up and prepared and stashed in the freezer. I got the foods and supplements and everything else I thought I need. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">For the September walk challenge, I bought an iPod and an Audible subscription, because I find walking to be incredibly tedious. I found a rail trail near my house that’s nice, and prevents me from being mistaken for a bear and shot or being run over, which are actual considerations for walking anywhere else. I even got tee shirts with a front pocket so I’d have some place to put said iPod while I walked. I basically did everything I could think to be prepared and to minimize complications, which actually flows nicely into the next thing…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Conserve Willpower </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I believe, and there is a decent amount of evidence to back this, that willpower is a finite resource. That every time you do something you do something you don’t want to do (or vice versa) you use up your daily allotment of will. So if I go some place with bread, and then visit Mom and she’s making pie, it’s gonna be a lot harder to say no to the second thing.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So I reduced temptation as much as possible. Like I said, I picked August because of minimal willpower requiring situations. I made sure stuff I liked and was carby was out of the house or, at least, out of sight. Even the eating beef thing was this; the less choices I had, the less will I needed to use.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Set A Time Limit</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And I did the No Carb thing for a month. And you know what was hardest about it by month’s end? Logging the stuff, which was part of my commitment. By month’s end, the eating was a breeze, but the typing up what I ate and such was a tremendous pain in the ass.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But setting a time limit helps that whole willpower thing. That’s one of the key things in a twelve step program, I think, the notion of one day at a time. You don’t look at forever, you look at today. Or in the case of me, you look at August. You can tell yourself that you can have that bread in September and that’s a whole easier than saying you can’t have it ever.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Add One Thing At A Time</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Or subtract. Basically, one change at a time. As I mentioned, I’m doing the walk thing in September. Because I don’t really like doing it, and doing both that and not eating stuff I want to eat would use up too much willpower. But now that not eating carbs has become a habit thing and not a will thing, I can switch that over to other areas.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Calories Count</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">They do. But what trips people up, I think, is that they don’t matter in a way that is necessarily consistent or predictable. By way of a for instance, I have been meticulously weighing my food this month, so I can tell you that 1200 calories and 2500 calories are, for me, the same. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But I did and do have to make an effort to restrict what I eat somewhat. Intially I did this by cutting out certain stuff I wouldn’t really miss. Lately, I’ve added eating in a narrow window to that. Both help.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And this is all a bit of moving target. 2500 calories was definitely enough to lose weight when I was 314, but it holds me steady at 262. I’d bet that if I dropped them way down below 1200, I’d drop weight again. I just don’t want to. I don’t like being cold and hungry all of the time.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So Do Carbs</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But carbs matter too. They matter quite a lot to me, since my body can’t deal with them. How much they matter to the non diabetic is up for grabs, but I reckon it depends on the individual.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But I can tell you this – 2500 calories with high carbs has a different effect on weight loss than 2500 calories of protein and fat. Mostly because with the high carbs, my blood sugar runs high, and that means that I have less energy and become generally more lethargic and THAT means I burn less calories.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Exercise Doesn’t Matter</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">For weight loss, for me, so far. About half the time when I lost weight, I was exercise pretty vigorously – I lifted weights for an hour and did the elliptical for forty five minutes four days a week. And I was busting my ass at both; on the elliptical I was always trying to beat my calories burned which while not accurate in absolute terms seemed a good enough way to judge the progression.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The other few years I was about as sedentary as could be without actually lapsing into a coma. I felt better when I was exercising, but my weight loss was exactly the same. And incase you were wondering, the exercise was the first half, not the second.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So for weight loss and just weight loss, exercise hasn’t made a huge or even noticeable difference. I like to exercise and it improves pretty much everything else, so I do it anyway.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So there, in apparently novel form, is how I dropped the weight and what I think I know.</div>Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-15519721970345595802012-07-25T11:59:00.001-07:002012-07-25T11:59:00.083-07:00Those Who Laugh - Part Four<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style><![endif]--> <br /><div class="MsoNormal">Their buildings were….different. Because they weren’t bipeds, the Squids apparently had different ideas about directions and construction. He had Bob bring him down in what had been one of the largest cities on the planet. It still was, Tucker supposed, but it had been covered in a velvety red something. He thought of it as moss, although it clearly wasn’t. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">They hadn’t been dead long, as these things went. Bob said that the last of them would have died around a century before arrival, although general civilizational collapse had taken place quite a lot before that. It takes time for an entire species to die. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">If you could compare things like that, Tucker would have said they’d made it to about early twentieth century earth levels of technology. Like their buildings, their mastery of tools had gone in different ways than Earth’s had. They had never developed spaceflight. never set foot or, rather, pod on any of the three moons that orbited their home. There were no man made satellites, no debris in space. They had lived and died on this one small world, alone in space.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Squidworld was a particularly rich find for the Fermi survey, Bob told him. The way that the Squids had utilized data storage technology meant that vast chunks of it were able to be scanned and interrupted by Bob. None of the machines themselves worked, but the data endured. This was rarely the case with these worlds. Mostly they had to interpret the civilization from what remained after, educated guess from the manner of their lives and, quite often, the means of their deaths.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Tucker felt strange, walking through that city. Part of that was strictly physical; the planet had a different gravity and a different atmosphere than Earth standard and while it was subtle, he could feel it even with the encounter suit on. But the bigger part of it was the same feeling he’d had every time he’d visited a world like this. The sense that he was walking across someone’s grave. A sense of trespass. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">He made his way to and up the tallest building. Eventually. The Squids didn’t believe in stairs, so he needed some assistance from Bob in getting to the top of it. He looked out across the city, which stretched as fat as the eye could see. He looked out at it and if he squinted, ignored the red moss and the encroachment of nature, what he saw looked very human. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Squids were far, far removed from homo sapiens, but as Tucker looked at their works, trying not to despair, he couldn’t help but feel a kinship. They were Squids, but they were people. They’d lived, they’d worked. They’d even loved, Tucker was willing to bet. They were like us. And now they were gone.</div>Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-30401457134814619852012-07-24T14:39:00.001-07:002012-07-24T14:39:42.741-07:00Those Who Laugh - Part Three<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style><![endif]--> <br /><div class="MsoNormal">They were squids. Okay, they weren’t squids, but that’s about as close as he could get to describing them. This was the 47<sup>th</sup>dead civilization their ship had studied for the survey, and what Tucker had learned was that tool using life came in a lot more forms than simply the bipedal.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The common requirement was they have something to manipulate tools with, which is about as obvious a fact as it was possible to get. But what they manipulated those tool with could vary, quite a lot, and Tucker had seen civilizations built by beings that you’d have imagined could have never managed such a thing with their physical requirements.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The squid/octopus tentacle arrangement actually happened to be one of the more common ones, which inspired a lot of theories among the scientists back home and a lot of intense glances at cephalopod life, who they suspected might be either hiding something or seriously underachieving.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Squids actually looked surprising close to Earth squids, albeit large and land dwelling. Bob informed him that they actually possessed a rigid internal skeleton and were not especially close, biologically speaking, to squids. This cemented Tucker’s mental decision to call them Squids. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">They were dead. The planet wasn’t. They rarely were. Every now and again one of the survey ships came across a world where there wasn’t any actual life left, but it was incredibly rare. Species come and go. Life persists. This was a problem for the survey actually. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">They knew of a lot more planets where civilizations had come and gone and now there was nothing left to see or analyze but trace chemical and odd dispersal of elements. Time wiped away most things, and faster than people would like to believe. So what they knew of the dead civilizations was informed by a selection bias of sorts. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">If they used materials that could stand up long enough to the tides of time, then the survey could find out quite a lot. Some of them, some of them they didn’t even know what they looked liked. That bothered Tucker. Someone should know. Even if they were dead and gone, someone should know that they were there and that they had been. Nobody deserved to be forgotten.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Squids had based their technology around silicon, and the way they went about it was such that much of what they had built, much of what they were had endured. Bob had been in orbit for a while before he brought Tucker up, scanning. He could tell Tucker anything he wanted to know. He could tell him everything that was there to know. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“I want to see it.” Tucker said. He expected an argument from Bob, or some kind of obfuscating ignorance. But Bob simply prepared a shuttle for him without comment or question.</div>Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-19130599799217707262012-07-20T10:58:00.002-07:002012-07-20T10:58:24.757-07:00Those Who Laugh - Part Two<br /><div class="MsoNormal">There were, of course, dozens if not hundreds of theories about why this was, and many of them were entirely probable. At least one of them was almost surely right. But it didn’t matter; the truth was, when humans found out that they were now alone in the universe, they need to see why. In person.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Well, some of them did. Somebody should be there, someone real, to look at what remained of their galactic neighbors. Someone should bear witness. Which is why Tucker Wells was so very far from his home.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">He wasn’t alone. There were actually another eleven people that were under right now, and Tucker could instruct Bob to bring them up anytime. They wouldn’t mind. Twelve was determined by some sociology minded personality to be the optimum number for long term missions. Less, and the group could descend into group think in ways that would make the trip miserable for all involved. More, and they fractured into something resembling tribalism. Or so the idea went. Tucker, for his part, had his doubts.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But the protocol was that when they reached a new world in the survey, one person would be woken up first to observe first before everyone was awakened, and it was Tuckers turn in the rotation. He liked it. He enjoyed being able to think about what he saw and drawing his own conclusions. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And, frankly, it was just nice to spend sometime by himself. Tucker, like everyone else aboard, had the sort of personality that could be sent on a mission like this, where he wouldn’t get home for millennia, if ever, which meant he needed alone time.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The ship had started out much smaller than it was now. Since Bob could scavenge raw material as he went, there was no reason to wait for the ship to be full constructed before they started. When Tucker went under for the first time, the ship was basically a sleeper core with an engine attached. The first time he was brought up, it had expanded. Significantly.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Bob, being a personality created specifically for the purpose of spending centuries at a time looking at nothing but the void, was not supposed to be able to get board. Nevertheless, there was no good explanation for what Bob had done to the ship aside from boredom.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Last time, the ship looked like a chrysanthemum that has in the process of exploding. It included a gym, an artificial mountain, and an exact replica of the Oval office. Tucker wasn’t sure why, and Bob’s answers had been unfulfilling.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The ship still looked like it had more dimensions than were strictly necessary but Tucker noted that the entire ship’s corridors had been covered in rugs that appeared to depict, and Tucker was not a historian, the history of Argentina in visual form. He was pretty sure he could feel Bob waiting for him to ask about that. Tucker didn’t give him the satisfaction.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Eventually, pondering whether the personality that was responsible for their survival had gone insane or, worse, hadn’t, got old and Tucker figured it was time to actually do his job. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“Show me” he said.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And Bob did.</div>Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-54350766024285659062012-07-19T10:57:00.000-07:002012-07-19T10:57:31.865-07:00Those Who Laugh - Part One(Posting this as I write it, so expect more in the future)<br /><br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal">Those Who Laugh</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">A billion light years from Earth, Tucker Wells stumped his damn toe. Hard. He went down swearing, and the floor managed to warm up enough between his ass moving towards it and his ass making contact that it didn’t feel cold. It could do that, but it couldn’t warn him he was about to jam his little toe into the doorframe with way more force than was comfortable.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Tucker was about ninety percent sure that the personality on the ship did this sort of thing on purpose, possibly as a result of being a mind that could perform factors of magnitude better than the meat monkeys it was tending to. He wasn’t sure that Bob, the personality, had a sense of humor, but he had his suspicions.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“Are you alright, Tucker?” Bob said.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“I’m pretty sure that your scans work down to the picoatomic level, so I think you know. I also think that you move the doors just slightly every time you wake me up.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“Tucker, you know that your safety and well being is my highest concern. And yes, you’re fine. Won’t even be a bruise.” Bob said, in a smooth voice that, like the door thing, Tucker strongly suspected was designed to annoy him while simultaneously allowing Bob plausible deniability. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Tucker grumbled but didn’t actually say anything, rocking on his naked ass while cradling his toe. That he was so far from home, surrounded by the pinnacle of human technology or, at least, what had been the pinnacle when he started on the survey, and was sit buck ass naked grunting like an ape was not lost on him. He laughed. What else could you do.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“Once again, are you alright Tucker? Should I wake up the others.” Bob said.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Which was personality passive aggressive for get your ass up off the floor and do the damn work. So he did. Well, first he went to the bathroom and pissed, which was where he was going when the toetitanic happened.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">After that he got dressed and went to see what Bob had done to the ship while he was under. He could have had Bob tell him, or even make a neural connection while he was under and have Tucker just wake up knowing, but Tucker was old fashioned, and preferred to see things for himself. He wasn’t alone in that, which was why he was so far from home.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The truly cost effective way to explore the universe was to create self replicating Von Neumann probes and, indeed, they’d done just that. They had refined the art of creating personalities down to the point where they could launch baseball sized probes cores and let them grow from there.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But the probes were just the scouting party. Their job was to find worlds that looked like they were or at least had been habitable. Preferably with signs of civilization. There was no good reason that the probes wouldn’t have been enough. Logic said that the quality of the sensor arrays that built was many factors of magnitude better than anything humans could parse, and that seeing these places through probe transmission wasn’t just the same as the real thing, it was better.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Except it wasn’t.</div>Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-24913471404899241292012-07-17T15:23:00.000-07:002012-07-17T15:23:56.922-07:00My Own Private San DiegoWell, SDCC has come and gone without me. I’ll give you a few minutes to stop the wailing and gnashing of teeth at my absence.<br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Since San Diego is the place for announcements, I thought I’d give a brief rundown of what’s coming up for me in the nearish future.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Projects happening:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Legend of Luther Strode – Starts on the first Wednesday of December. Like TSTOLS a six issue mini.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Team 7 for DC – Starts with the zero issue in September. Ongoing,</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Secret Project for Secret Publisher – Should start in November. Hopefully will be announced this week. Also ongoing. Also awesome.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Secret Project 2 for Secret Publisher 2 – No set date, six issue mini.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Projects being pitched soon:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Tomorrow – Brent Peeples and I are working on this six issue miniseries about, sort of, the twilight of the superheroes. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Versus – John Amor and I follow a dueling pair of superhumans from their origins in the American Civil War to THE END OF TIME. Or, my excuse to do steampunk, golden age superheroes, modern superheroes, the not quite Legion of Superheroes and Jim Starlin COSMIC.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Other Stuff I’d like to do:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Digital comics – a couple of different things, actually. For one, I’d like to have a whirl at doing a direct to digital cheap as fuck to buy comic. Like a buck an issue, for a full size issue with extra trimmings.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I’d also like to do some medium length digital stuff that wouldn’t really work as print comic economically. So forty to fifty pages, done in one stuff, costing maybe a 1.99 or so. Ideas that I’d like to do that don’t quite have enough there for a miniseries.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And of course, all the other pitches I have that are in active development. Got lots going on.</div>Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-34294061932489891372012-06-08T10:31:00.000-07:002012-06-08T10:31:39.434-07:00Team 7, DC Comics, and How I Got There.<br />I am writing the Team 7 book for DC comics. Which is awesome on any number of levels. I mean, first of all, DC Comics! Second, Team 7! The original was my favorite Wildstorm back in the day, so it means a lot to me to get to write the new one.<br /><br />Here's a bit about it: http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/06/08/dc-offers-zero-issues-in-september-launches-new-titles<br /><br />Anyhow, since this went public, I was asked to talk about how I broke in. I'm not sure if what I have to say is all that useful, but I'll give it a shot. <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Well, I did Luther Strode, obviously, which Image liked well enough to get me on the cover of Previews. That, obviously, got the book a lot of attention (as did Tradd's badass art) so people were aware of the book. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">We got a lot of good reviews and our sales were good, and we got great word of mouth, so our sales actually increased from month to month. Which again, got noticed.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Which led to a prominent DC writer (not mentioning his name here, because I don't want him to get flooded by people thinking he's the gateway to DC) liking the book and my writing, and he told DC editorial that they should take a look. They read Luther and liked it, and asked me to pitch them on Team 7.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Annnnnd, here we are. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So, basically, write a book people like, and then get lucky. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Contrastingly, I have another big WFH that I got by flat out sending the editor an email, and then sending him my stuff, and going from there. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Hack/Slash gig I got because I wrote a book that Tim liked, and then we met in a bar and got along. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So, I guess, if I have any advice (which is a dubious idea, but I'll run with it) it's this:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">1. Don't Give Up. I've been trying to out together books for the last ten or so years. I was rejected maybe twenty times? Possibly more. I kept working and kept going.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">2. Work Hard. I am lazy as a fuck, in general. But I do take my writing seriously and I work as hard as I can at it. I've got ten projects that I am trying to get off the ground (not the failure rate above - I don't expect more than one or two to pan out, if that). I try to write twenty or so page of comics a week. It adds up. And it continues after - I worked twenty or thirty hours a week for two months leading up to Luther, just trying to get the word out. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">3. Don't be a dick. I am, fortunately, mostly not a dick naturally, but being someone who is fun to be around and easy to work with goes a long way. If you're super talented but you piss off everyone you work with, you're going to have a hard time of it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">4. Be lucky. There's a lot of shit you just can't control. I had no control over whether Tradd would like the book. I had no control over whether above mentioned writer would like the book. Whether DC would have something they like. Whether Tim Seely would be at that bar. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">What I could control, and this is really what points one and two are about, is my opportunities to be lucky. If you do the work and keep doing the work, you vastly increase your chances of luck going your way. I can't and won't tell you that if you work hard and don't give up, you will succeed. You might still not make it. But what I can tell you is that if you don't work hard and you give up easily, your chances are essentially zero.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I don't know if that's useful, but it's what I got.</div>Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-709511598862211682012-05-01T15:23:00.001-07:002012-05-01T15:23:00.105-07:00True Crime<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style><![endif]--> <br /><div class="MsoNormal">I didn’t know him. Or at least, I don’t think I did. My college was a small one, a few thousand students in a small town, so it’s near certainty that our paths crossed at some point. Especially considering that I worked at the library’s front desk. But if we did, I don’t remember it. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">What I do remember is when he died. I came on campus for lunch, and the whole feeling of the place was wrong. I don’t know that I’ve ever really subscribed to the notion of a place having atmosphere, but you could feel it. I’m not sure how, exactly, something in the way people moved, the way they talked. Something was wrong.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">What was wrong was that a popular student had been found in a nearby park, shot to death, his body burned. It hit people hard. I’m not sure that if it was the only murder the school had in its century plus history, although my recollection is that it was. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">We had enough of the sort of crimes you get in a college town, but not murder. Especially not one as cold blooded as this turned out to be. The murder turned out to be drug related. He was sold marijuana, and one of his regulars and two other men abducted him to get his money.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">They got a thousand bucks to split between them. And after they did, one of them placed a shotgun in the dead man’s mouth and pulled the trigger. They had brought a can of gas to burn the body.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It was the first and thank fuck so far only time I’ve been even vaguely near to that sort of crime. It’s not that I didn’t know of people getting killed, growing up. But they were all cases where people got caught up by their emotions and did something stupid. Evil, maybe, but not cold.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This, though, this was different. It was three guys who decided to plan out and kill another person. They might argue that the plan was simply to rob him, but the facts show another story. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And I’ve never really been able to get my head around that. There’s a gap, there, between thinking a terrible thing and doing it. I can certainly think of terrible things; indeed, it’s in my job description, but because I am a relatively normal person, the process of jumping that gap to the real is fascinating, horrible and inexplicable.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I could just about wrap my head around getting so pissed off you grab a gun and shoot someone. But these guys, these guys might as well be aliens. Whether they fit the textbook definition of a sociopath, I couldn’t say. But they’re a different sort of human than most of the rest of us.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">I won’t say that the whole thing affected me in any dramatic way. It didn’t. I didn’t know the guy. But I think about it. I remember a girl that I was acquainted with that knew him breaking down in class. And I remember it’s the first time I really thought about the gap, the invisible but infinite distance, that separates us from monsters</span>Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-52857537644006694002012-03-14T08:34:00.002-07:002012-03-14T08:58:01.748-07:00How Luther's Powers WorkLast issue of the first mini is out today, so if you haven't yet read that, you may or may not want to read this.<br /><br />I've been asked, a few times, about the exact nature of Luther's (and the Librarian's, by extension) powers, so I'll take a second to explain it. I think you should be able to get this from the comic, but I don't go in for the 'splainin much so I'll do it here.<br /><br />For the right people, what The Hercules Method does is allow complete knowledge and conscious control over your body. At the most basic level, you get greater strength, speed and stamina, and perfect coordination. At the more advanced levels, you get the ability to make your body knit itself back together, which you see in six.<br /><br />This same knowledge also gives you a couple of less obvious abilities. Because you are so in tune with your own body, you begin to be able to see other's people's body's the same way. What you're seeing with Luther's meatvision is a visual representation of that.<br /><br />That same thing also allows Luther and the Librarian to tear people apart, because they know exactly where the weak points are. That they are superhumanly strong is helpful there, too.<br /><br />Related to that is the ability to read body language, presented here as the millity billion ghost images Luther sees. It's not quite seeing the future so much as it is being really observant and having a terrific reaction time. The reason he can't really do that to the Librarian is because the Hercules Method allows the Librarian to control his body to cloak it from Luther.<br /><br />Less obviously, it also allows you to hone your senses to greater than human levels. You see a wee bit of it in issue six.<br /><br />None of this makes them invincible, as the Librarian found out. Destroy the brain or the heart or the spine, and they die.Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784902913849642025.post-38479365711123212992012-03-01T11:47:00.002-08:002012-03-01T11:51:19.458-08:00Create A Character Day<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal">It is, apparently. Since I a writer and not a drawer, this is a written thing. But I give you Casey Atwell, a ghost who is haunting herself.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Outside</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">For 107 minutes, Casey Atwell was dead. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Her revival and subsequent full recovery were hailed as a miracle. And it was, but not the kind that most people think, because Casey never came back at all. Casey is trapped as a ghost, outside her own body, watching something that is not her take over her life while Casey can do nothing but watch.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">And the other Casey is evil. She is slowly destroying everyone and everything that Casey cares about, and she is the only one that can see Casey. Now Casey needs to find a way to fight her before everything she loves is gone.</p>Justinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12806373510709724947noreply@blogger.com0